The August pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club is…

We’re excited to announce that “What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky” by Lesley Nneka Arimah is our August pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club, “Now Read This.”

Credit: Riverhead Books

“What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky” is a debut short story collection from Nneka Arimah that ranges from realism to folk tale to sci-fi, telling tales of family and home. It won the 2017 Kirkus Prize and New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award.

In a review of the book in The New York Times Book Review, novelist and short story writer Marina Warner calls Nneka Arimah a “witty, oblique and mischievous storyteller” whose stories reflect her acute insight into multiple societies, having been born in the U.K., grown up in Nigeria and the U.S., and now living in Minnesota.

“Yet race and color, prejudice and conflict are not the dominant themes in her work,” Warner writes. “Rather, she examines the cruelty, losses and imbalances brought about by clashes between women, especially girls. Arimah is most insightful when exploring the complex relations between mothers and daughters and between young women.”

In the coming days, we’ll post discussion questions for the book, an annotated excerpt, and writing advice from Nneka Arimah. And at the end of the month, she will answer your questions on air.